Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
CLOVER
A s I followed the drone through the ashes of Howth, down shattered streets half-buried under rubble, the two men followed me . I hadn’t saved myself from them at all; I’d only delayed the inevitable and pissed them off in the process. They shoved me, spat on me, squeezed my arse, and grabbed at my breasts. With every bloody step, my legs shook harder, both from fear and from hunger, but somehow, they kept pulling me forward, delivering me to my doom. I ignored the taunts from the men behind me, ignored the leveled homes on either side of me, and stared straight ahead at Ireland’s Eye.
Searching for a selkie that didn’t exist.
Once we reached the harbor, I was shocked to find that most of the boats and several of the buildings there were still intact. The pier, the restaurants lining it, and the warehouse-like fish market where Da had sold his daily catch were all still standing. Probably because the Russians were using those buildings as some kind of headquarters. Tanks that looked like armored boats lined the main street. Tents crushed every blade of grass in the park next to the pier. But everything else had been destroyed.
Except for the boats in the harbor.
I stared at the faded red trawler at the end of the pier, and for the first time that I could remember, I wanted my da.
The drone led us past the loading dock behind the fish market and around to the main entrance facing the harbor. Men in camouflage watched me pass, their eyes lingering on my bare legs before flicking to the faces of the arseholes behind me with an appreciative sneer. My feet began to drag, my body recoiling from the hell that awaited me inside that building, but two viselike hands around my upper arms propelled me forward.
Just before we reached the door, it slammed open and stayed that way as a sailor or soldier struggled to pull something heavy out from inside. Releasing me to hold the door, the blue-eyed man with the buzz cut exchanged words with the stranger as the object he was dragging came into view.
First a foot, then the leg it was attached to, and then the rest of the naked young woman came sliding out the door, as unwieldy and unwanted as a bag of garbage. And almost as badly soiled. Multiple streams of blood ran down the length of her inner thigh, some dried and smeared, some shimmering red. Her torso and bare breasts were covered in burns, lashes, bites, and bruises. And when her pale gray face finally came into view, it was beaten beyond recognition and half-covered with a bloodstained matting of icy-blonde hair.
Sophie.
My empty stomach lurched violently as I turned away, dry-heaving on a startled sob. It was the single most horrifying thing I’d ever seen, and it had happened to someone I knew. A regular girl, like me.
And I was going to be next.
The drone began beeping in what I assumed was a warning that we needed to keep moving, so with a huff of impatience, the bearded man released my other arm and helped his comrade fling my classmate’s lifeless body into the harbor.
I’d made a mistake.
I’d made a horrible fucking mistake.
I should have let that drone kill me the very first night. Now, I was going to be tortured and raped to death, and for what? So that the man I’d saved could die of thirst or infection or starvation while he waited for me to return?
The speed of the beeping increased, like a bomb that was about to explode, and for the first time in a week, that didn’t scare me.
But what was waiting for me inside that building did.
I was frozen to the spot. I couldn’t run, even though I was temporarily unrestrained, and when the bearded man’s fist closed around my bicep again, I couldn’t make myself walk either. Jerking on my arm, the arsehole shouted at me in Russian before he finally leaned over, planted his shoulder in my stomach, and lifted me off the ground.
“No!” I screamed, kicking and thrashing as the other two men joined him in wrestling me into the building, but my efforts were in vain.
The men were simply too strong. And as soon as the door closed behind us, I knew that I would never be coming back out.
Alive.
Between my flailing limbs and the bodies of the three men carrying me, I couldn’t see much, but I could tell that the warehouse was dimly lit and smelled like a combination of fish, cigarettes, and every imaginable body fluid. Setting me down on an old wooden stool, one of the men held me still while the other two lashed my ankles to the legs with cable ties.
They shoved my torso forward so that my wrists would reach the front legs, which meant that I couldn’t sit all the way up, but also that if I got tired and leaned too far forward, I’d fall face-first onto the concrete floor. In fact, if I thrashed at all, I’d fall face-first onto the concrete floor. My only option was to try to maintain a semi-upright position, which wasn’t easy with my bruised thighs, abs, back, and ribs all screaming in pain.
When I finally lifted my head, I saw that we were gathered next to the long counter where Da used to sell his fish, which was now covered with laptops instead of mackerel and lined with Russian militants instead of fishmongers. Some of the screens had maps, or spreadsheets, or pages full of Russian text on them, but most were broadcasting arial footage of various places in Howth and Dublin. The screen in front of me, however, whose operator was shouting back and forth with the men who’d carried me in, had a very different image on it—the back of a hunched-over girl in a mud-soaked jumper, lashed to a stool.
Looking over my shoulder, I watched as the drone that had led me there slowly glided past us and landed on a charging dock next to the laptop. My bewildered face, framed by two curtains of unwashed hair, stared back at me just before the screen went black.
Someone had been manning that drone after all.
My gaze shifted to the balding, middle-aged man who was stationed at that laptop. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted at my captors, and it became apparent that he carried some kind of seniority over them. He thrust a hand in my direction several times during his rant, but it wasn’t until his eyes followed that gesture that I understood why he’d shot at his own men for beating me. Heat flared behind his crazed stare as he salivated over my filthy, battered body. His tongue slid along his slimy teeth, and I could almost see the gears in his head turning as he contemplated what to do with me.
He hadn’t given a shite about them hurting me. He’d just wanted to make sure that they delivered me to him in one piece.
With the flick of his chin toward the door behind the counter, he barked at them in Russian, and my captors nodded with something that sounded a lot like, “Yes, sir.”
Picking up my stool by the seat, they carried me past the rows of laptops and into the bowels of the fish market. There must have been a kitchen back there because the hallways were filled with the scent of fresh-cooked seafood. They were probably burning through Howth’s entire weekly catch, trying to feed everyone stationed out in the tents. Saliva pooled in my mouth, and acid gnawed at my empty stomach as I wondered if they’d feed me too. Give me water. Put any effort into keeping me alive whatsoever.
The water question was answered a moment later when they carried me into a bright white room lined with sinks the size of small bathtubs. I imagined they had once been used to clean fish or maybe store it on ice, but now, they served as toilets and sinks for the trembling, naked prisoners handcuffed to them. The stench of vomit, piss, sweat, and shite burned my eyes as I searched their faces. Four women, hiding behind what was left of their hacked-off hair, and one old man.
“Mr. McCormick?”
The white-haired fella didn’t respond—he just stared at the ground, his shriveled body curled against the wall, like a dead leaf that hadn’t yet let go of its vine—but the younger woman to my right did.
“Clo?”
A familiar pair of eyes looked up from the bruised knees they’d been hidden behind, but I barely recognized them without the brutal, bullyish smirk that usually accompanied them.
“Liv?”
Her long, expensive highlights had been chopped off in random chunks, her lip was split, her arms were bruised and burned, and I knew from the emptiness in her deep brown stare that I’d probably find a smear of blood between her legs, too, if I dared to look.
Suddenly, a hand sliced across her cheek, and the sailor with the buzz cut shouted, “ Peet !”
Sitting up, Liv stared straight ahead and, like a robot, began singing something in Russian.
“ Kashdie ! Kashdie !” he demanded, gesturing wildly for everyone else to join in.
The naked women joined in, mumbling a song in a language they didn’t know as they watched the sailor circle the room with wide, terrified eyes. He sang at full volume, waving his arms like a possessed orchestra conductor and pausing only to kick the prisoners who had made mistakes—which was all of them—until he came to Mr. McCormick.
“ Peet !” he shouted, kicking Mr. McCormick as hard as he could in the hip.
When the ol’ fella didn’t comply, he shoved something small and black against his ribs, causing his entire body to convulse violently. I watched in horror as the man who’d once told the best jokes in town, the one who’d always greeted me with a smile, and who’d once given Da a ride home from the pub when he was too smashed to drive slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“No!” I managed to shout just before pain shot through the side of my head and the ground rose up to meet me.
I landed sideways on the tiled floor, still attached to the stool, with my forearm crushed between the wooden seat and the ground. Panic gripped me, chasing away the pain and the sounds of the men’s raucous laughter, as I prayed that the bone wasn’t broken.
Grabbing my other arm, the bearded man—the one who’d just hit me—jerked me back up and righted the stool, still laughing as he brandished a knife and lunged for my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut with a whimper, but felt only a few scratches as he hacked through the wool of my jumper. In less than a minute, I was as naked as the rest of the prisoners, but unlike them, I still had my hair to hide behind. My matted, tangled, mud-caked hair.
The man with the buzz cut crouched down so that we were on eye level, but I refused to look at him. My heart thundered in my chest as he grabbed my face, jerking it from side to side as he appraised my appearance. Turning my head all the way to the right so that his comrade could look at me, too, they joked in Russian, their sexual tone punctuated by nauseating chuckles.
Buzz Cut released me and turned around, running the water in the sink behind him. With his friend preoccupied, the bearded man took his place, stepping in front of me. I held my breath as he tipped my head as far back as it could go. Then, he leaned forward and smashed his mouth against mine.
Coarse, cigarette-scented facial hair grated my skin as he probed my tightly closed lips with his tongue. When I refused to open up for him, he grabbed my face like his friend had but squeezed harder, forcing my lips to pucker just enough for his tongue to penetrate. Bile hit the back of my throat as he licked my clenched teeth, clamping his free hand around my breast in anger. My pained whimper was quickly silenced by a hand around my windpipe as an unintelligible barrage of shouts peppered my face with spit.
I couldn’t breathe, and for one brief moment, I hoped that I never would again. I hoped that he’d lose control and end me right there and then, but all too soon, Buzz Cut intervened, barking something at him that made him back away. I sucked in two lungfuls of air, but before I had a chance to exhale, I sucked in even more as a bucketful of cold water cascaded over my head. Then another. And another.
From my crouched position, all I could do was stare at the drain in the floor as the men scrubbed me with dish towels, touching me everywhere, pinching and squeezing and fondling whatever they pleased. Shutting out the feeling of their hands on my flesh, their cruel laughter in my ears, I focused only on the water pouring off of me. I watched as it changed from brown to clear. I sucked in every muddy drop that streamed past my lips, but it wasn’t enough to quench my thirst. If anything, it only made it worse.
Beyond the drain in the floor, I also noticed that the sink in front of me had an empty pair of handcuffs hanging from the drain pipe and a pile of white-blonde hair scattered underneath. A fresh wave of dread wash over me.
This had been Sophie’s sink.
And now, it was mine.
I pictured the way her body had looked, being dragged out, limbs twisted, face smashed in. I was so distracted by it that I hardly noticed that the men had finished scrubbing me—that was, until the glint of a serrated blade caught my attention.
My eyes squeezed shut as the bearded one grasped a chunk of my hair and began sawing away at it. It felt as though he had ripped every strand out by the root before he finally released me, tossing a wet lock of auburn hair the size of a snake on the floor.
I stared at it as the metal door slammed shut behind me, and for several seconds, the room was eerily silent.
Deathly silent.
“Mr. McCormick?” I finally asked, turning my head to the left, but my heavy, wet hair blocked my view.
“It’s for the best,” Liv snapped.
The other prisoners that I could see nodded their heads in agreement before hugging their knees and burying their faces again.
“What do you mean? Is he …” I turned to face Liv.
She nodded, hugging her own knees as she watched me with sunken eyes. “If he’s lucky.”
I thought about what she’d said and couldn’t disagree. It didn’t make his death any less tragic, but I was sure anyone in that room would have traded places with him if they could have.
“What happened?” I asked, scanning the downturned faces and naked bodies in the room. “I thought everyone was evacuating.”
“We were,” Liv answered bluntly, “but traffic got backed up with everyone trying to get off the peninsula at once, and then … they put up roadblocks.” Her deep brown eyes clouded over, as if she were seeing something I couldn’t.
“They went from car to car, takin’ the women … shootin’ the men.”
Her face was expressionless, but I knew. Her da, her brothers … her ma.
Oh God.
She kept talking, trying to get past that part as quickly as possible. “But some men, probably the weaker ones, got brought back here, too. They forced them to watch.”
Her eyes refocused and landed on Mr. McCormick’s naked husk.
“They’re gonna come for you soon.” Her attention shifted back to me with a sense of urgency. “When you first get here, they all take a turn. If you want my advice, fight back. Bite, scratch, kick, spit … be such a fuckin’ problem that they decide to go ahead and kill ya. Trust me. The longer you stay alive”— her gaze drifted over to the empty handcuffs in front of me—“the worse it gets.”
“Is that what Sophie did?” I asked gently. As cruel as she’d been to me all those years, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. For all of us.
What little color was left in her face drained completely at the mention of her best friend’s name. “Why do ya say that?”
I recoiled from the venom in her tone.
Liv sat straight up, pinning me with a murderous glare. “Why do ya say that, Clo? Did you see her?”
“I … I …” I shook my head slowly, hoping that she would get the message without me having to say it out loud. “I’m so sorry.”
Liv slumped back against the wall, her face falling and eyes glazing over, just like Mr. McCormick’s had when I got there.
And like Mr. McCormick, she didn’t so much as flinch when the door shot open behind me a moment later.